


i'll walk beside you, love (any way the wind blows)

by novel_concept26



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: A fill for a Tumblr prompt: What does the story look like, if Jamie doesn't leave that night--if Jamie is, in fact, the one to reach the lake first?
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 41
Kudos: 505





	i'll walk beside you, love (any way the wind blows)

Nothing, as Jamie sees it, is going particularly to plan. It isn’t life the way she normally likes it--the routine, the schedule, the nice-and-boring approach--and there are parts she doesn’t mind going sideways. Parts she’s okay with changing the plot for. Parts she’s even excited to follow down new paths.

There are also things that scare the sense out of her, things she isn’t wired to handle, things she simply isn’t _designed_ for.

It is, she thinks with desperation, with exhaustion, a balancing act.

***

The first thing she doesn’t plan for is Dani Clayton. Goes without saying, really. She didn’t plan for Rebecca Jessel, either, and look how that played out: wasted potential, a man’s iron grip around a woman’s boundless ambition, a body in a lake. Story ends. Story ends, and Jamie couldn’t change it, and by the time Dani Clayton turns up, she wonders why anyone would even try. 

She keeps on wondering, as Dani turns the stable atmosphere of the manor into something...just a little bit new. Owen is still cooking, Hannah is still mopping, the kids are still a little more and a little less than they ought to be at the same time, but Dani brings a touch of the bizarre with her all the same. Sometimes, when the kids act out, there are consequences. Sometimes, when the house creaks, there’s a woman asking why. 

Sometimes, when Jamie looks up, she finds a pair of blue eyes staring back.

It’s not so different as to shatter Jamie’s content routine. Not so different as to shake her confidence that this house, these gardens, these people make the right amount of sense. Not quite. But if she’s taken aback by Dani’s determination to turn the kids into real people, instead of spoiled rich caricatures--and if she’s taken aback by Dani’s tendency to warm a room simply by walking into it--and if she’s taken aback by Dani’s laugh, half-choked on the end of a sob--well. Little things. Little upheavals. 

And then, bigger ones.

And then, Dani’s thumb on her skin.

And then, Dani’s kiss in the dark. 

And it’s not what she was looking for, not what she has time for, not what she even knew she wanted. Talking to this woman of all the stupid shit that can take a person down from the inside. Talking to this woman of loss. Of death. Of missed opportunities. It’s not a road she intended to walk down.

By the time she’s walking through the front door with a flashlight and a tiny, blistering hope, Jamie understands she’s going down this road either way. Even if Dani didn’t want to walk it with her, she’d be going down it. She started the night Dani looked deep into her eyes, smiled, said, “People do, don’t they? Mix up love and possession.”

Unplanned. Unexpected. Not exactly the same as unwelcome. 

***

She tells her life story to the broad side of a tree, her eyes burning all the way through, and she’s a little surprised she can still feel it so much. A little surprised that even now, twenty years after her mother walked away and her father gave up, the loss still gapes open behind her ribs. She’s aware of Dani the whole time, leaning slightly forward with her hands between her knees, silently taking it in, silently filing it all away. She finds pretty quickly she can’t actually _look_ at Dani while she’s talking. Can’t actually bring herself to look into the face of this woman with whom she’s sharing so much. 

_This is the part where she changes her mind_ , she thinks. _This is the part where she understands this isn’t going to be a walk in the park for her, either. That I’m not going to save her. That I’m just--_

Dani is looking at her with such open affection--such open want--that for a minute, Jamie can’t see her properly. For one minute, the story she’s just released into the world for the first time in years--the first time _ever_ in such a full-dose manner--is a roar in her ears, blocking everything else out. She feels herself sway, feels the pressure of Dani’s hands closing around her upper arms, feels the grove resolve itself once more: lantern light, and pattering rain, and Dani’s kiss hungry on her lips. 

_I’m exhaustive_ , she thinks, feeling Dani break away, but Dani is just looking at her. Just looking at her with this smile on her lips, and when she leans back in, the sigh she gives is the most relieved sound in the world. _I’m exhaustive_ , Jamie thinks again, letting her hands grip at Dani’s coat, _but so is she, and maybe we can be exhaustive together._

Maybe this is just the way it’s meant to go--not two parties who are easy, but who decide to embrace one another’s weight, anyway. Deciding to each lean back until you meet in the middle, and find--inexplicably, incredibly--you’re still standing. 

She’s kissing Dani, and it’s bewildering in the best way, because this is not an agreement to keep silent. This is not a mutual decision to let skin be skin and never discuss it again. Dani’s hand gripping the base of her jacket, pressing her body into Dani’s with more confidence than Jamie’s seen from the woman in weeks of knowing her, says, _Lean in. Let go. I’m here, I want this, I’ll catch you and you’ll catch me, and it will be all right._

 _I’m exhaustive_ , she thinks, and Dani is exhaustive, and for the first time in her entire life, Jamie’s not sure it matters. Not with Dani’s arm around her neck, not with Dani making soft, pleased noises into her mouth, not with the rain in the trees, and Dani’s tongue tracing her lips, and the story of Jamie’s misery dissipating into the air like so much drifting breeze. 

They might stay here all night, she thinks, her hands sliding around Dani, one slipping into that warm space between her open coat and the softness of her sweater. They could make a place out here among the moonflowers and the damp ground, a place no one else could ever find. A secret club of sorts, with no password to forget, no handshake or code or hidden entrance. Just Dani, grinning and pulling her close. Just Dani, accepting the story and discarding it as just words, just words, making up not who Jamie _is_ but how Jamie got here in the first place. 

“We should get back,” Dani says breathlessly. Jamie presses into her, drawing and feeding warmth in equal measure. _Right_ , she thinks, _the kids. She’ll be wanting to check in on the--_ “We could...go to my room.” 

She sounds nervous, but not half so much as Jamie was anticipating of the young woman who walks like she’s expecting a blow at any time. She sounds, in fact, more excited than anything else. Hopeful. She’s looking right at Jamie, not over her shoulder, not around for interlopers of a spectral variety. Just looking at Jamie with her lip between her teeth and her blue eyes dark, and something in Jamie goes skidding toward a break she won’t be able to recover from. 

_Lean in. Let go. I’ll catch you, and you’ll catch me, and it will be everything._

There is no rush, somehow, even for how fast they retrace their steps up the grounds. No rush, as she eases Dani back against a tree and kisses her neck, liking the sound of Dani’s laughter mingling with the summer rain. No rush, as they step out from a shielding branch and the downpour finds them at last, as the chill of the night seeps through jackets and into hair and between lips that cannot, even now, be separate. 

This was never Jamie’s story, and even now, even with her hands ruining Dani’s hair, even with Dani making that very particular sound against her skin, she’s having trouble believing it. Jamie believes in what she can see, and she believes in what she can watch grow, and she believes in what she can touch--and, even still, this feels like a dream. Even still, this feels like luck made flesh. 

This was never Jamie’s story, but Dani is kissing her with so much behind it--every angle of her head, every brush of her nose, every break and return of her lips made up of promises Jamie couldn’t have guessed at before tonight. Dani is kissing her like she’s been waiting for this moment her entire life, and the rain doesn’t matter, Jamie’s terror at being seen doesn’t matter, Dani’s own terrible baggage doesn’t matter. 

Their shoes slip and squeak on the manor’s hardwood floor, their hands woven together as they rush up the enormous staircase. Jamie is giggling into Dani’s shoulder with a freedom she doesn’t even remember from childhood, her arm around Dani’s waist, as if parting ways for even the time it takes to reach Dani’s room would be an insult to the entire evening. She’s still laughing, even when Dani shifts on her back foot, unexpectedly pinning Jamie against the bannister, and then it’s less a laugh and more a huff of surprised desire from the way Dani is looking at her from inches away. 

“Bedroom,” she says, very quietly, too aware of the low voices from the kitchen, of how little she wants to see their friends tonight. Dani nods, leans in slowly, kisses her with the most deliberate intention Jamie’s ever been on the receiving end of. Her open palm is against Jamie’s racing heart, fingers clenching unexpectedly around the front of her shirt to yank her forward again. Jamie, off-balance, grabs for her and there is just a moment where they’re little more than grasping hands and the suspended state of holding on for dear life. 

Dani is grinning, hauling her by the shirt-front up the remaining stairs, and Jamie thinks with dazed giddiness, _I am exhaustive, and so is she, and if we both keep hanging on like this, there will be no fall._ It’s such a gloriously pleasant thought. Such a magnificent impossibility. There is always, Jamie thinks, a fall along the way. Always a moment where your foot misses a step, and gravity takes over. 

_But if she’s got hold of me, and I’ve got hold of her, at least we fall together. And isn’t that the idea?_

Dani’s room is neat, each small token of her life arranged in its place. She watches Dani press the door into place, her hand hesitating on the key, her eyes turning to seek out Jamie. 

“Should--”

Jamie is already moving toward her, her hands unacceptably empty, and Dani is still half turning the key in its lock even as she twists at the waist and kisses Jamie hard. There’s a ferocity in her, Jamie thinks with wonder, accepting the kiss and returning it with equal vigor. A ferocity none of them would have expected that first day, seeing the young au pair in this very same sweater, the one who gave the kids just a little too much leeway and found herself locked in a closet for her trouble. They’d laughed, good-natured and with instant affection, about the too-American nature of her, and Jamie hadn’t seen it yet. Hadn’t known yet, how strong Dani has needed to be simply to stay upright through a ghost story all her own. 

_Think I’m crazy_ , Dani had said miserably, but Jamie doesn’t think there’s an ounce of crazy to her. Not a single dash of it, not this woman whose lips are greedy under her own, whose hands are pushing Jamie’s wet jacket off her shoulders, whose eyes flicker open when Jamie leans back to help her free of her own. This is a terribly sane woman, a wonderfully sane woman, who has seen things that should provoke madness and come out the other side stronger for it. Jamie doesn’t understand, has never seen ghosts like the one Dani has carried across the ocean, but she believes in Dani’s sanity all the same. 

There is nothing insane, she believes, about hope. About pushing toward the light, even from the depths of a coal mine. 

Dani’s fingers stroke along the line of her jaw, down her neck, catching hold of her collar. It’s a question, and Jamie answers with her own hands at the hem of a soft sweater. For a beat, it’s a stalemate, her experience coming up against Dani’s lack, and that's fine with Jamie. She’d be fine to stand here all night, tips of her fingers resting just under the material, testing against the skin of Dani’s stomach. She’d be fine to stand here for the rest of summer, with Dani gripping her by the shirt, eyes pleading and anxious and crinkling at the corners with the start of a smile. 

She leans in, kisses Dani softly, and up the sweater comes in a slow, almost teasing arc. Part of her is waiting for Dani to smack her away, she thinks; part of her is always waiting for Dani to jump back, to remember what she’s been running from since the moment they met. When Dani only raises her arms, leaning back in as soon her head is free, Jamie laughs a little and hugs the sweater in a ball to her chest. 

“Where should I...?”

Dani looks around, one arm already looped around Jamie’s neck again, her hand coming to rest flat against the back of Jamie’s right shoulder. She can’t know it, but her palm is a perfect fit against the scar Jamie takes such pains to keep hidden. 

“Here,” she says, seeming almost pained to remove herself from Jamie. She walks quickly to the bed, pulling aside several pillows and piling them on a nearby piece of furniture Jamie can’t see anyone actually using. So much about this house is excessive, she thinks, pressing her chin down into the sweater. So much about this house is more than either of them could ever need, and yet, without it, she wouldn’t be watching a half-dressed Dani move things around with a dogged sense of purpose. 

Dani reaches out, pats the stack of newly-shifted pillows, and Jamie drapes the sweater over them. It feels like a symbol, somehow, of this thing they’re setting out on. Like this one small action, taken with such care, is going to set the tone for...

 _One thing at a time_ , Jamie thinks, even as Dani is crossing to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress, looking at Jamie like she truly isn’t certain what comes next.

“Seems a bit unfair,” Jamie says, gesturing to her own shirt with a small grin. “You’re well on your way, and I’m still--”

“Wet,” Dani says, utterly unselfconscious, and Jamie laughs. 

“That, too, I suppose. Should I...?”

Dani is nodding, breathless, reaching for her, and Jamie moves to her like a dream. There is something about undressing for the first time, she thinks, that can’t be rushed. Shouldn’t be overstated. Needs to be cherished. Something about the particular heat of Dani’s gaze when she grasps the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her own head, Jamie finds she wants to memorize for the rest of her life. 

They come together once more as if in slow-motion: Dani’s hand tracing down her arm, Jamie’s sliding up her ribs, the both of them tipping back until they’re as supported by the bed as one another. If she’d thought the way Dani kissed her out in the rain had been more than she deserved, it is nothing compared to the way Dani is kissing her now. 

There are words that always come with acts like this, like _worth_ , like _deserve_ , like _earned_. Tonight, with Dani in her arms, she finds none of those words are reaching for her. There are words, yes, but they are not inside Jamie’s head, telling her all the reasons she should not be doing this. They are Dani’s-- _please_ , and _here_ , and _yes_ \--and they are her own, breathed right back: _show me_ , and _touch me_ , and _Dani_. 

They leave the light on. She can’t say why that means so much, not even on the heels of telling Dani almost everything she’s ever regretted about her life. She can’t bring herself to form it now, to give it meaning--but Dani’s hand never strays to the lamp, and Dani’s eyes never stray from her body, and Dani’s smiling even as Jamie touches her for the first time. There is such _light_ , to a smile like that. So much, it’s as if Dani couldn’t hold it back if she tried. 

She hesitates only once, watching Dani’s face for any sign that this is not welcome, and Dani reaches up with both hands. Pulls her down into a kiss Jamie will feel well into the next day. 

The night goes on, and on, and on, and Jamie wouldn’t rush past it for the world. Jamie could stay here forever, Dani’s arms around her neck, Dani’s nails dragging down her back, Dani’s voice right against her ear in pleading, panting joy. _This_ , she thinks, _this would be the moment, if I could pick a dream to live in. This right here_ , with Dani whispering her name like a drumbeat, with Dani fumbling along her skin with unpracticed hands, with Dani on her lips, on her breath, on her fingers. 

_Let me stay here_ , she thinks, even knowing the best part is still whatever is _next_. Even knowing the best part is touching Dani--and feeling Dani unwind beneath her--and letting herself fall into Dani’s embrace. Each part, better than the last. Each part, a dream she has done nothing to earn, and would never sacrifice, not for any god or ghost in this world.

***

In the morning, Dani is gone.

Jamie knows it even before her eyes are open. She can feel the void where Dani ought to be, the space where Dani’s body was tucked tight against her own last night. Dani, who had kissed her shoulder, nuzzled against her spine, fallen asleep with breath tickling down Jamie’s back. Dani, who had held her like Jamie never again needed to feign strength for someone else’s benefit. 

And now, with sunlight freshly scattered across the carpet, she’s alone again. Naked, and alone, and why is she _surprised_? When has Jamie ever not woken this way, to the singularity of her own breath in a bed she can’t take back?

The only difference is, this time, she wouldn’t want to.

Dani’s left, and maybe that’s for the best, after all. Maybe last night wasn’t what she’d needed, not like Jamie did. It happened--Jamie can’t deny that, not with her clothes scattered across Dani’s floor, not with the scent of sex and Dani’s shampoo still on the sheets, not with Dani’s voice moaning her name still reverberating in her head. It happened. There’s no changing it. 

But something happening doesn’t mean it has to matter, and it doesn’t mean they ever have to talk about it again. 

She dresses quietly, collecting each article with the grim air of one preparing for a reset. Her belt is lost under the bed; she finds it with Dani’s underwear and almost loses her composure altogether. Closes her eyes. Yanks her shirt over her head. 

Get dressed, get out. Dani doesn’t want to talk about it? That’s fine. They still have to work together, but Jamie can be an adult about this. She can pretend she never showed Dani the moonflowers she gives so much to grow. Can pretend Dani doesn’t know about her family and her mistakes. Can pretend she doesn’t know how Dani’s skin feels against her own, how Dani laughs with pleasure when she makes Jamie gasp, how Dani tastes, grips her hair in both hands, pushes hard against her mouth with sharp little thrusts of her hips until--

No, sure, she can be fine with this. 

She comes around the corner, foot just hitting the top stair, and collides with a body. Dani, who windmills her arms, grabs hold of Jamie to keep them both from going all the way down in a bruising heap. 

“Sorry,” Jamie mutters, “sorry, I was just--”

“Flora,” Dani says, not hearing her. Jamie frowns. 

“What about her?”

“Sleepwalking,” Dani says, clearly frustrated. “Sleepwalking again, but it’s like...it’s like when I talk to her about it, any memory of doing it just...falls out of her head.”

Jamie’s own head is spinning. “Flora was outside again?”

Dani’s hand is still around her elbow, she registers. Dani’s thumb draws soft arcs across her skin, almost as though Dani doesn’t realize she’s doing it. Her brow is creased with worry, her mind plainly still out on the grounds, but her hand...

“Were you leaving?” Dani asks suddenly. There’s an edge to the question, a thin artery of hurt that breaks Jamie’s heart. She shakes her head. 

“No, I--I thought you--” _Don’t. Don’t get into it. You were wrong, and that’s entirely fine._ “I was looking for you.”

“Not leaving?” Like it never crossed Dani’s mind. Her mouth is pulled down, an expression so like a pout, Jamie can’t not kiss it away. 

“I’ll stay as long as you like.”

“Careful,” Dani says softly, lips brushing Jamie’s in a way that sort of makes Jamie want to pull her straight back to the bedroom. “Could be a long time.”

***

Hannah glances up, eyebrows raised, and says nothing. Jamie has never loved her more, slouching into the kitchen in yesterday’s clothes, with Dani’s hand loose in her own. It’d be the perfect opportunity for a teasing word, but Hannah only gives them a patient smile. 

“Good night?”

“Best,” Dani says, without a shred of embarrassment. Jamie’s body goes flush, waiting for Dani to elaborate, but Dani only says, “Flora’s been out again. I’m really starting to worry.”

Hannah looks only slightly perturbed. Jamie remembers Dani yesterday, saying Hannah seems not entirely present these days, and frowns. This should be bigger news. This should be a bigger bother. 

But Hannah only says, “Should we call the doctor again?”

“I don’t...” Shoulders rising and falling helplessly, Dani takes a seat. “I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but I can’t help but think I ought to call Henry.”

“Again?” Hannah shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s going to make much of a difference, dear.”

It isn’t the first time Jamie’s seen Dani’s face perform this particular trick--the falling into disappointment followed instantly by a smooth neutrality--but it never gets any easier to watch. This is Dani’s go-to response for being shut down, and Jamie finds herself wanting to know what sparks this sort of instinct in a woman. How many people--well-meaning, like Hannah, or otherwise--have told Dani her instincts are wrong? How many times has she been disbelieved, her expertise set aside?

“Well.” Hannah, seeming to sense Dani’s shift in mood, offers another smile. “If you think it’s best, maybe you’re right. Where are the children now?”

“Flora went up to wake Miles.” Dani is staring at the ceiling, as if trying to manifest x-ray vision. “If they’re not both down in a minute, I’ll go--”

“Anyone lost a pair of youths?” Owen calls, strolling into the kitchen with arms full of green plastic bags. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve commandeered them for heavy lifting.”

Flora and Miles, staggering under the weight of several more groceries, giggle. Flora looks fine to Jamie’s eyes--bright around the smile, bouncing along in the wake of her brother--but, then, Jamie doesn’t entirely know what to look for. These kids have been unpredictable at best for a year. If one is a little glazed around the eyes, or a little aggressive toward the adults, it’s no stranger than the average Tuesday.

 _Dani can see it, though_ , she thinks with certainty. Dani can see these kids in a way the rest of them just can’t. Maybe because she’s still new, because the house hasn’t quite come to claim her the way it has the rest of its occupants. Or maybe it’s just Dani: made to help people, made to protect these kids at all costs.

Something about that idea, that Dani would sacrifice everything for these children, is like a blade to Jamie’s throat. 

“Here,” she says, standing from the table and scooping the bags out of Flora’s arms. “Don't need you straining your young backs. By the time you’re my age, you’ll be all stooped like a garden witch.”

She mimes hunching over, one eye shut, giving Flora a teasing swipe. Flora giggles, but there’s something about the way she looks at Jamie...something familiar and incredibly wrong at the same time.

 _It’s nothing_ , Jamie thinks. Long night, every nerve standing at attention in all the best ways. She slept like the dead in Dani’s arms, but it’s still no shock, that she’d be in a mood today. 

Dani, she notes, is watching her pull groceries and stack them on the counter. Not the way Dani usually watches, either, with skittering discomfort; her eyes are warm on Jamie’s back, as if she’s finally given herself permission to memorize mornings like this one.

 _There will be more_ , Jamie promises silently. _So many more just like it._

She can’t quite put her finger on why it feels like a beautiful lie.

***

The kids rush off after breakfast, laughing and pushing one another, and Dani stands back with hands on her hips. Jamie, feeling a little like a stranger in this house she knows so well, leans her chin on Dani’s shoulder. 

“Feel like I should be working.”

Dani leans in as Jamie’s arm slides around her from behind, her hand rooting comfortably along Dani’s upper arm. That she hasn’t allowed herself to touch Dani until so recently seems a fact belonging to someone else entirely. Dani fits against her like she’s been there the whole time. 

“You probably should,” Dani says, even as she turns her head and kisses Jamie. The angle is awkward, and it somehow makes Jamie the happiest she’s been all morning. 

_A constantly escalating scale_ , she thinks with amusement, as Dani turns in her arms, pushing lightly with her hips until Jamie has the corner of a table digging into her back. It says something about them both, about the ice broken last night, that Dani kissing her in this hallway feels not the least like a threat to normalcy. Dani kissing her, one hand sliding dangerously up her torso until Jamie groans and squirms, just feels like coming home. 

“There are,” she says, as Dani nudges at her jaw with her nose, tilting Jamie’s head back, “other human beings in this house, you know.”

“Mmhmm.” Dani is gently sucking at a spot halfway down her neck. It sends sparks straight through her, hands dragging up to grip at Dani’s back. 

“There are humans,” she repeats in a voice drawn embarrassingly taut by what Dani is doing with her tongue, “who will--will--”

She honestly doesn’t know why she’s complaining. Can’t imagine a single reason, with Dani’s hand cupping lightly through her t-shirt, with Dani’s hips rolling slow against her own. 

“You’re right,” Dani says, taking a step back. Her smile has a teasing quality Jamie finds entirely new, entirely captivating. “What was I thinking?”

Jamie shakes her head, unable to keep a straight face. Hannah, cued blessedly late, sticks her head out of the kitchen. 

“Jamie, would you mind checking on the bathroom sink down the hall? It’s gone and developed that bloody drip again.”

Dani manages to keep it together only until Hannah is gone. She’s still laughing when Jamie grabs her around the waist and lifts her an inch off the floor. 

“You,” she says in a low, exuberant voice she barely recognizes, “are in so much trouble when I’m done saving this damn house from falling down around our ears.”

***

No day has ever gone by as leisurely and at such a sprint. Jamie can’t quite rationalize putting off work the whole time--even after making the reasonably-simple repair to the bathroom pipe--and Dani would chop off her own hand before letting those kids out of her sight longer than a few minutes. They compromise by loitering out in the gardens, Jamie intercutting time among the roses with ambling over to help the kids braid daisy chains. Miles grumbles the whole time, until Jamie spins him a story of faerie rings and the deadly-charming royals who will spirit willing fools off forever. Flora, who is generally a fan of both daisy chains and Jamie’s stories, is distant. 

“You okay?” Dani’s expression is calm, but there’s something jumpy about her eyes, something that says she’s waiting for Flora to keel over backwards without warning. Flora blinks, smiles. 

“Perfectly splendid, thank you for asking.”

 _Too polite_ , Jamie thinks, not for the first time. _These damn kids are too polite for their own good._ It’s always been off-putting. She’s never known children to be so well-mannered. 

“They’re okay,” she says quietly, leaning over to press her nose against Dani’s hair when the kids grow bored and shamble off to play a game of their own. “Weird little beasts, but perfectly all right.”

“It’s like she’s not quite there sometimes,” Dani replies. She reaches without looking, finds Jamie’s hands, strokes her thumb along the ridges of Jamie’s knuckles. It’s somehow the most intimate sensation, how naturally Dani’s thumb presses and slides while her eyes gaze out across the lawn. 

“Know what you mean. Happens with both of them,” Jamie agrees. “Started after Rebecca...well. After Rebecca. Think it’s just too much loss for kids that young, you know? Sooner or later, something gives.”

She keeps waiting for Dani to protest when she says things like this, things too dark or too sad for children, but Dani never does. She just looks at Jamie like she’s taking it all to heart, her head nodding agreement. 

“Would they tell me?” Dani wonders. “If it was something really bad? If they were sick, or...”

“They’re all right,” Jamie promises once more. The kids are out of earshot, playing some game that seems to involve how far they can throw sticks across the yard. She takes advantage of their distance to kiss Dani until her breath speeds up, until Dani’s hand bunched around her shirt leaves her certain this will end in trouble soon. “Okay. Okay. Back to it.”

Dani, lips a little swollen and glistening in the sunlight in a way Jamie finds desperately appealing, groans. “I earned that.”

“More than,” Jamie agrees. “Later, Poppins. Patience is a virtue.”

“What,” Dani says slyly, “about last night was _virtuous_?”

***

Flora is normal--or Flora’s brand of normal, anyway--until around three that afternoon. Jamie isn’t as surprised as she’d like to be when the little girl stumbles up to Dani, cheeks stained a bright, unhappy red, and says, “Miss Clayton? I don’t feel...so...”

She doesn’t quite faint this time, but Dani gives Jamie a pleading look all the same, and Jamie hoists Flora into the air. 

“Fever?” she asks, when Dani presses her hands to Flora’s cheeks. Dani shakes her head, puzzlement evident in every inch of her face. 

“No, she’s...cold.”

“Tired,” Flora sighs against Jamie’s shoulder, sounding halfway to slumber already. “Tired. I don’t understand...why this keeps...”

They tuck her into bed, assuring her--assuring themselves, more like--a little sleep will set her to rights. Even as Dani is pulling the door shut, Jamie can tell neither fully believes it. 

“Maybe something runs in the family?” Dani suggests. “Something Henry didn’t think to tell me?”

Jamie thinks on it. “Nothing comes to mind. Wingrave family is complicated, but reasonably healthy, far as I knew them.”

“Miles,” Dani adds, spotting him lurking down the hall. His hands are in his pockets, his chin lifted in that arrogant little jut that sets Jamie’s teeth immediately on edge. 

“Yes?” Too polite again, too pleased with something Jamie can’t read. Dani doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Have you been feeling sick again? Maybe there’s a bug going around--”

“It’s just Flora,” he says idly. “Playing her silly little games again.”

Dani looks briefly irritated. Jamie is frankly impressed at how quickly the expression comes and goes. “She isn’t feeling well, Miles, that isn’t a game.”

Miles shrugs. “If you say so.”

They watch him stride off, something too adult about the set of his shoulders. It makes Jamie’s jaw ache, whenever he behaves like this--a clench of her teeth that reminds her too forcefully of watching another male striding the halls of Bly like he owned the place. 

“Hey.” Dani is touching her face very lightly, searching for something in her eyes. Jamie forces herself to relax. “You’re not feeling weird, too?”

“No,” Jamie assures her. “No, it’s--nothin’. Just don’t like when he reminds me of Quint, s’all.”

“He’s only a little boy,” Dani says, in a voice just this much more uncertain than the last time she’d uttered those words. _Only little boys_ can still do so much damage, if they put their minds to it. “There’s still time to undo anything Peter Quint...”

Jamie wonders if that’s true. Remembers all too vividly how little Denny had watched the boys at school, the men of town, their own father say things not easily taken back. How Denny, small for his age and furious about it, found new ways to open old cracks in her armor whenever the opportunity presented itself. 

“Maybe,” she concedes. “Hope so.”

***

Owen puts Miles to work in the kitchen, preparing two separate meals--a fine soup for Flora, a heartier dinner for the rest of them, complete with pie--and Jamie takes the opportunity to pull Dani away for a little while. They stroll across the grounds, hands swinging between them, and Jamie thinks the ever-dimming sunset blazing in Dani’s hair should be bottled. This whole day should be bottled, even with the oddity of children. Just the way Dani reaches for her, a little nervous in the best way, those nerves vanishing the longer she's kissing Jamie, is worth more than Jamie’s whole flat. 

“I’m glad,” Dani says, her fingers squeezing Jamie’s lightly, “you stayed.”

Echoes of more difficult times. Jamie watches her profile, the relaxed line of her walking without fists clenched and purpose in her stride. “I am, too. You know, this morning, I thought...”

She pulls up short, not having meant to bring it up, but Dani is looking at her with knowing eyes. 

“Thought I regretted it, didn’t you?”

Jamie gives an awkward half-shrug. They’re coming up on the chapel, and she briefly thinks of tugging Dani inside. It would tempt too many ghosts, she supposes, to lay Dani out on the pews and follow her down. Would tempt Hannah, if nothing else, to berate them for sacrilege. 

_Can it be sacrilegious, if I believe in her more today than I’ve believed in any god or monster in my entire life?_ She snorts a little, imagining Hannah’s expression. 

“I don’t,” Dani, oblivious to this line of thought, says. “In case it wasn’t obvious. I don’t regret a second of it.”

Jamie pauses, meeting her eyes, finding nothing but sincerity reflecting back at her. There’s a pink blush along Dani’s cheeks, a tiny twitch to the way she places a thumb between her teeth and bites lightly at the nail. Jamie takes her hand gently, brings it to her own chest until they can both feel the way her heart is quickening its pace. 

“Not a second,” she agrees, and when Dani melts into her, it’s like breathing. 

(If they do spend a reckless ten minutes with Dani backed against the outer wall of the chapel, sunlight spilling down her face as she groans Jamie’s name, they’ll never tell a soul. No one but the grounds would ever tattle, and as far as Jamie is concerned, a wall is only sacred because it’s holding Dani up.)

***

Dinner is a cheerful affair, decadent food and uproarious laughter mingling to create an environment Jamie considers simply _family_. Flora, having slurped down a bowl of soup in a daze, is back in bed, but Miles is in rare form where pie is concerned, and Jamie is comforted to see him sloppy as a ten-year-old boy ought to be. 

Comforted, too, by the rest of it: by Hannah stealing little glances at Owen, who is stealing them right back, and by the heavy comfort-food quality of the meal, and by Dani’s chair angled toward her own. Dani, whose hair is pulled back from her face, laughing as Jamie has never heard her laugh, like there are no weights holding a door shut on her happiness. Dani, whose leg is pressed to Jamie’s under the table, sending sharp waves of warmth up her body. 

Dani, who Jamie could quite happily sit beside at a table of friends for the rest of time, if she’s honest with herself. 

When Flora joins them, aggrieved and confused, Jamie can’t help muttering, “Told you she wasn’t herself.” The one shadow cast upon the day, she thinks, is in Flora seeming as though she hasn’t been walking through it with the rest of them. Flora, who looks at them with the gaping, bruised expression of a child who has been done a terrible wrong. 

_She isn’t okay_ , Jamie thinks with sudden disquieting clarity. _Something about her isn’t okay, and hasn’t been for a while, and I can’t figure it out._ She hates that. Hates not knowing how some element of her life is pieced together, what’s making it tick onward. Miles is the same way, even now, squinting at his sister with a not-quite-natural sneer on his lips. 

Dani finally manages to coax Flora back to bed, and Jamie follows, unsure where else to go. This house, which has been such a fixture in her world for years, seems just a little more wrong without Dani now. A little colder. She feels better in Dani’s company, and part of her knows that’s dangerous--in a new way, a way nothing else ever has been. In Dani’s company, she feels so utterly herself that there’s a danger of leaning _too far_ in. A danger of smothering the flame before it’s had a chance to truly catch. 

Dani looks at her with eyes wide and hopeful, even as Jamie says, “I’m gonna go”, and there is a pull between them she understands as mutual in every regard. She does not want to go. Does not want Dani to let her go. Wants only to walk with Dani back down the hall, climb back into her bed, spend another gorgeous evening learning everything there is to know about Dani Clayton. 

“I should change my clothes, at least,” she amends, and part of her knows she _should_ go. Should let this breathe. Should step away and allow Dani a chance to decide, without her hovering, exactly where this is going. 

“You could...come back.” This is the most nervous Dani has sounded all damn day, and that alone is almost enough to push her resolve over the edge. She swallows, one hand braced against a long cabinet, already knowing the next words are going to set in stone her decision.

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.” Dani’s expression grows instantly brighter, her eyes somehow more blue than they were a second ago, and _fuck_ , Jamie is gone for this woman. “Tonight.”

“I dunno, Poppins,” Jamie says, knowing she can’t bring herself to mean it, knowing Dani can see it all over her face. “I dunno, you’ve got your hands full--”

“Well,” Dani says, catching the script and twisting it with another glimpse of that brand-new bravado Jamie is liking more and more. “I’m gonna be up all night, checking up on her, anyway...”

 _Say goodnight_ , Jamie’s good sense insists. _Say there will be other nights. Say it, and mean it, and go._

She tries. She honestly does. She says the words, and puts everything she has into them--but she can’t stop the way she’s looking at Dani, either. Can’t stop the additional thought, completely out of her control: _Convince me. Convince me to stay._

As if she could deny Dani a goddamned thing, with her leaning in, with her hands relaxing only when Jamie takes them in her own. 

There is no such thing as the perfect kiss, she’s learning. Every kiss with Dani feels like the absolute peak, the so-called platonic ideal of what a kiss ought to be. There is no perfect, because every kiss that follows somehow shatters the one which came before.

This kiss, though. This kiss is in the running. The confident press of Dani’s hand against her back, urging her in, the way Dani parts for her kiss with a soft sound Jamie can’t resist, the softer-yet brush of Dani’s tongue. She should go. She should squeeze Dani’s hands once more, lean back, give a lingering smile--and go.

“Okay,” she hears herself say. “Okay, Poppins.”

***

“You’re still here?” Hannah has the grace to sound surprised. Jamie shrugs, trying her hardest to look as though this was an accident. As though she didn’t talk herself, against her better judgment, into staying at the manor tonight just to find herself in Dani’s bed again.

 _Once is a gift. Twice is a pattern in the making._ But she suspects Dani knows that; suspects Dani is, in fact, counting on it. It makes it all so much harder to feel guilty about. 

“I figured,” Jamie says, when it becomes clear Hannah is actually waiting for an answer, “it’s been a rough day.”

“Has it?” This time, a hint of that teasing energy she’s been expecting all day. Hannah is starting to grin the way she only does when she’s gearing up to stick probing fingers into Jamie’s ribs. Jamie resists the urge to stick out her tongue. 

“For Flora,” she specifies, pouring herself a cup of tea from the still-steaming pot on the counter. “A rough day for Flora. I figured you could use all hands on deck, just in case.”

“Noble of you,” Hannah replies, still grinning. “Strange, how Owen lacked that same nobility...he headed home over an hour ago.”

Jamie tries not to display upon her face where she’s been for the last hour--or two--and what she’s been doing. As though she hasn’t been in Dani’s bed, the two of them engaged in the world’s longest, least-rushed make-out session. As though it hasn’t been two glorious stop-and-start hours of her hands roaming under Dani’s sweater, of their legs tangled on the bedspread as Dani’s mouth works its way along Jamie’s ear, her neck, her lips, back again. 

It’s been better than Jamie could have planned, alternating between relaxing while Dani checks in on the kids and perking up each and every time she slips back through the door. There’s just something about the sight of Dani, backlit by the hall lights, shouldering into the room on a mission centered entirely around joining Jamie on the bed. 

She headed off to perform another check-in a good fifteen minutes ago, and Jamie--finding herself pleasantly warm and sleepy with her head on the pillow she’s already thinking of as _mine_ \--decided her options were to doze off or to go for a walk. Two options, but only one that was likely to result in more of this perfect lazy engagement in Dani’s bed. 

“You know me,” she says now, pointedly ignoring Hannah’s expression of mirth. “Like to be of service.”

“I’m certain you are servicing quite nicely,” Hannah says, so primly, Jamie has no choice but to lob an unused tea bag at her head. 

***

Dani’s been gone for nearly half an hour. Not that Jamie’s worrying. Not that there’s anything _to_ worry about. Flora probably woke up and needed a heartfelt chat about the trials of the day, is all.

Except Dani, generally, is not the sort of woman who disappears for extended periods. Particularly not today, when she’s been within reach of Jamie almost full-time. For Dani to be gone this long without coming to find Jamie is...curious.

“You don’t think Flora made a break for it?” she asks Hannah, who is still tidying up the dinner mess. Jamie has been drying the dishes she’s handed, methodical motions keeping her brain from running away with itself. Mostly. 

“A break for where?” Hannah frowns. Jamie shrugs. 

“She’s been out a lot lately, hasn’t she? Maybe she’s out at the lake.”

Hannah’s frown crests into genuine concern. “I certainly hope not. This time of night?”

Jamie says nothing, but privately thinks sleepwalking doesn’t tend to keep a schedule based on manners. She finishes the mug in her hands, sets it down on the counter with an unintentionally-definitive clunk. 

“Think I’ll go check. Just for my own peace of mind.”

“Be careful,” Hannah says. A strange thing to say. It’s dark, certainly, but there’s nothing of concern lurking on the grounds. Jamie should know; Jamie knows every inch of this land like her own lifeline. 

Even so, she finds herself looking around with more anxiety than normal, searching the trees, the rose bushes, each corner and cobweb of the grounds, for signs of trouble. Of Peter Quint, maybe, or of ramblers, or of...

 _Just a kid_ , she thinks with more than a touch of frustration. _Just a kid sleepwalking, because she’s been through too goddamn much for a kid to take. It’s fine. She probably isn't even out here._

And if she isn’t, Dani certainly won’t be. Jamie shivers a little, sweeping her flashlight across stubborn shadows. Nothing. Of course, there’s nothing. 

“Fuck it,” she mutters, the grumpy texture of her own voice a comfort in the silence. “Fuck it, they’re probably just swapping stories over that damn dollhouse...”

There are just some feelings you can’t shake, some certainties that set up shop in your head and make absolutely sure you won’t be sleeping tonight. Jamie feels it now, that dragging pull of awareness at the back of her mind, that cataclysmic sense of something going wrong just off-stage. Without even meaning to, she’s moving faster, her legs taking her from a brisk walk to a sprint back toward the house. There’s screaming. Is there screaming? Could she be imagining such things, letting the shapes of nighttime nature play tricks on her suddenly-frazzled mind?

 _Been such a good day_ , she thinks deliriously. _Been so nice, what_ \--

Screaming. Yes. She thinks it’s coming from the parapet, from the one part of the house she hasn’t dared walk since the Wingraves died. She sometimes thinks she’s the only one--save maybe for Owen, who generally keeps to whichever part of the house most suits his work or his affection for Hannah--who hasn’t breathed that stale air. She doesn’t have the least desire to walk where Charlotte and Dominic made their life together, right up to the days before a senseless accident stole them away forever. 

But there’s screaming. And the kitchen is empty, no sign of Hannah, and Dani’s room is still warm with the glow of her bedside lamp, and the kids are missing. Jamie, adrenaline coaxing her shaking body toward top speed, staggers around the corner and finds herself facing the so-called forbidden wing at last.

 _I don’t want to_ , she thinks with a child’s trepidation, like Flora looking down the cellar stairs. _I don’t want to, but..._ But there isn’t any screaming, not anymore, just a terrible gurgling sound that makes her want to flee the house. 

Dani. Dani, on the floor on her back, one hand scratching at the air like she’s straining for anything that might put her back on her feet. Dani, in that sweater Jamie has spent the evening exploring, with eyes bulging and her voice trapped somewhere in a ragged throat. 

“Flora,” she rasps, as Jamie falls hard beside her, knees pounding floorboards hard enough to bruise. Her fingers tremble against the necklace of purple indentations around Dani’s neck--the same neck, she thinks wildly, she’d been kissing not an hour ago. How? How could the story change on a dime this way, without her even noticing?

“Jamie,” Dani says in that horrible not-there voice. “Jamie.”

“Easy,” Jamie hears herself say. Her voice is steady, somehow. Steady and capable, the way she’s always prided herself on being. “Easy, Poppins, we’ll--we’ll get you into town, get a doctor to--”

Dani’s hands, finding her collar. Dani’s hands, shaking so hard she has to try twice before she can locate Jamie’s face, grasping harder than she ever has in a moment of pleasure. She yanks until Jamie’s eyes leave the bruises, leave the stuttering way her chest rises and falls like she can’t quite draw breath, until Jamie’s gaze collides with her own panic-widened eyes. 

“Flora,” she says again. “The Lady.”

“What--Dani, what Lady, what are you--”

“The Lady,” Dani says, and for a moment, her eyes flutter shut and Jamie thinks that’s it. Thinks Dani is going right now, still holding Jamie’s face in her vibrating hands--and if she does, Jamie’s not sure she’ll survive the loss. 

When Dani opens her eyes again, there’s a steadiness that almost frightens Jamie more. 

“The Lady,” she says again, in a voice torn and fluttering, but firm. “The Lady of the Lake. I don’t know how. I don’t know what she is. She has Flora.”

Jamie, helpless, utterly lost, shakes her head. “Dani--”

“She. Has. Flora. She’ll take her, Jamie. She’ll take her into the lake.”

 _Insane_ , Jamie wants to laugh. _Insane. There is no Lady of the Lake, there is nothing that could do this, it was Peter. Peter Quint, lurking in the house. Peter Quint--_

“Is dead,” Dani says, and Jamie realizes she’s been speaking aloud. “Peter is dead, and Rebecca is dead, and if I don’t get--if I don’t--Flora--”

“Okay,” Jamie says, reaching up to close her hands around Dani’s. “Okay. Stay here. Yeah? Stay right here, and I’ll...I’ll go get her back.”

If pressed, she’d never be able to say why. Never be able to explain what it is about the conviction in Dani’s face, the utter terror combined with that desperate certainty, that makes her go. She only knows that this is one of those moments, the kind that steal up behind you and force a change you aren’t ready for. 

“Stay,” she says again, pressing a kiss to Dani’s forehead, hating herself for believing. _But Dani believes._ “I’ll be back.”

***

She tears out of the house in a blind panic, all but slamming into Hannah just outside the front door. Hannah looks wrong, somehow. Looks _less_ , somehow. Jamie’s almost too far gone to notice, but something about the way Hannah grabs her arm feels almost like a fine breeze. 

“Dani,” she says, ignoring the stab of unease. There isn’t time for more, isn’t time for yet another thing that might unbind her ability to get through this night. “Dani’s upstairs. Think she needs a doctor, Hannah--”

“Flora,” Hannah interrupts. “The lake. She needs you at the lake.”

Jamie can’t remember the last time she ran like this. The last time she ran like all the hounds of hell were coming for her at last, like every cop in the city had her scent, like running was her last chance at freedom. She runs, ignoring the stitch in her side, ignoring the way her heart rams itself against her teeth in harsh, rattling attacks. 

A body. She’s sprinting past a body, and if it’s familiar, if it’s a man whose face she hasn’t seen in person in over a year, that’s fine, that’s for later.

A dress. A white dress. And if it’s draped over something moving too slowly, too smoothly to be human, that’s fine, that can’t be processed right now.

A child. A child in the lake, up to her waist and getting deeper all the while, and if it’s Flora, if it’s Flora, it means Dani was--Dani was--

“Hey!” She’s screaming. She doesn’t mean to handle it this way. If she could only stop, could only take a breath and close her eyes and find solid ground again, she’d be able to figure this out. Jamie is not the sort of woman who goes sprinting into a lake, screaming at the top of her lungs at some kind of--some kind of _thing_ carrying a child, a child, _Flora Wingrave_. 

“Oi!” she hears herself scream, and is there another body beside her? Is there, in fact, a black dress to go with the white, a black dress and dark eyes and a beautiful misery Jamie couldn’t bring back from the edge? No time. No time to see that, either. 

Flora’s eyes, she can see now, are flickering shut. Flora’s eyes are closing, and when they open again, there is something else gazing out at Jamie. She can’t explain the thought, can’t explain why those eyes feel so adult and so horribly familiar, not with water soaking into her jeans, licking at the hem of her shirt as she wades deeper. 

There is something here, she understands. Something she can’t understand. Something she’s never seen, and Jamie doesn’t believe what she can’t see, Jamie doesn’t give credence to what she can’t tend with her own two hands, but when she screams the words, she believes them, anyway. Believes, if nothing else, that Dani would do it. Dani would do this very thing, if she could.

“Take me!” The words are half a gasp. She feels, dimly, as though there’s something else--that a magic spell should be specific, that a magic spell should be phrased just-so, but Jamie doesn’t have magic. Jamie doesn’t _believe_ in magic. Jamie only believes in a child sinking ever deeper, and a creature who could make it stop. “Take me! Give her back!”

The thing turns. Slowly, it turns, and Jamie recoils. There is a woman shape, certainly, a dress and shoulders and a head of lank dark hair. There is no face. 

“She’s just a kid,” she hears herself say, with all the pleading rage she can muster. “She’s just a kid, not much to her at all. Me. It’s me. C’mon, you fucker, why take her when you can have _me_?”

It isn’t magic. It isn’t carefully-spun faerie logic. It’s just a woman in a dripping Blondie t-shirt, her whole body shivering with the horror of a thing too big to comprehend, reaching both hands toward the blank gaze of the Lady. 

It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t work. 

Flora is in her arms. Jamie staggers under the sudden weight, almost going to her knees, her head ringing. “Hey,” she hears herself say, as if from an enormous distance. “Hey, kid, hey, you’re all right--”

Splashing, behind her. Splashing, and arms around her middle, and Dani’s voice in her ear. “Jamie. Jamie, is she--”

Dani should be in bed, Jamie thinks. Jamie should be with her. Flora should be waking up, should be saying everything is just _perfectly splendid_ , and Hannah should be there with tea, and--

“Come on.” Dani’s voice is still rough, still more air than sound, but her grip is surprisingly strong as she pulls Jamie toward shore. “Come on, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

 _Am I?_ Jamie thinks, trying to pull Flora around to look into her face. _Am I okay? Because if she opens her eyes, and it’s someone else staring back at me, if it’s a woman I was supposed to save and couldn’t looking at me from this eight-year-old face, I think I’ll start screaming._

“Jamie?” Flora is tiny, barely anything at all, sliding down her body to stand in shallow water. Her pajamas are so pink, her face so pale. “Where’s Miss Jessel?”

Jamie manages not to drop until she feels grass beneath her boots, until Flora is running to her brother and to Henry Wingrave. When Jamie falls, Dani is there, catching her under the arms, easing her down. 

The rest blurs around her, and all she can think is, _Shouldn’t have worked. Magic doesn’t work if you don’t believe._

“Jamie.” Dani, the only solid thing for miles, pressed in against her back. Jamie realizes her head is between her knees, sweat running down her face, each breath a chore. Dani’s hands are steady against skin, rubbing heat back into her arms. Dani, who wears a choker of fingerprints, who sounds shattered, trying to bring her back. 

Jamie wants to reassure her. Wants to say anything, really. Anything at all to remind herself that this is real, that the world has texture and mass and takes up the right amount of space. That there are no spectral women rising from a lake to steal children. That nothing so unreal could ever hurt them. 

“Dani,” she says weakly, turning her head toward the gravity of Dani’s gaze. “What the hell was that?”

***

An impossible night, spiraling into an impossible week. Henry, here, as if he’d never been away. Owen, distant, as close to broken as a man can get. Flora and Miles, with blank eyes and nervous mouths, telling ghost stories to the rest of them like they’re still expecting to be shot out of the sky.

Hannah. Dead. 

She hadn’t been able to look. Hadn’t quite been able to walk to the well, where Henry had been so certain they’d find the body. She’d made it halfway and had to sit on a fallen tree, her head in her hands, as Dani and Owen made the remaining trek. 

It’s the wrong story, she feels, in a way she can’t quantify. Any story Hannah is not in _must_ be wrong. Any story where Owen looks at the world through shattered eyes. Any story where Jamie can’t be there, can’t make herself walk that path and be the source of strength in the world. She’s meant to make it easier on the rest of them. She’s not sure who to be, if not that person.

But her head is ringing. 

Her head has been ringing for days.

At first, she thought she must have hit it. Must have misremembered falling out of that lake. Maybe Dani didn’t catch her until she’d already struck the ground, her head finding a rock, and this is the aftermath of a minor concussion. Maybe. It would make sense. It would give form to this sensation of never quite being...

What? Quiet. Safe to sleep. Alone.

It’s stupid. It’s impossible. She’s not _built_ for this, not built for a situation so inexplicable, so rooted in fear. Jamie believes in what she can hold. Can see. Can shape with her own two hands. Jamie does not believe...Jamie does not believe in...

“You all right?” Dani, turning away from her suitcase to gaze at Jamie. She’s been doing this a lot, and Jamie wishes she’d stop. There are ways she likes Dani to look at her--with affection, with amusement, with arousal--and there are ways she wishes Dani would never look at her again. Like she’s fragile. Like there’s something new about her Dani is constantly trying not to trip, some kind of fuse Dani is trying desperately not to light. 

Jamie tries to smile. “Fine. I’m fine.” Except she doesn’t like being lied to, and she likes lying even less, and from the way Dani is looking at her, she knows she’s caught. “No. I’m not. But I don’t have a reason, do I? So--”

Dani sets a sweater down, unfolded, and pats the bed for Jamie to sit. Grudgingly, Jamie obeys. It isn’t Dani’s fault, she thinks, that everything feels so wrong. Like her skin’s sewn too tight around her bones. Like every breath she takes is too little, too brief to sustain everything going on in her body. 

It isn’t Dani’s fault, but Jamie wishes with everything in her that they could go back. Back to this bed that night, to Dani’s soft giggle and softer kiss, and to Jamie feeling as though her hands were strong enough to carry anything placed between them.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Dani says, her thigh solid against Jamie’s. “But I’d like you to talk to me about something. Anything.”

 _What is there to say? I think I did something terrible out there? I think I let something_ in _?_ What does that even _mean_? Jamie doesn’t believe in ghosts, doesn’t believe in magic, doesn’t believe in walking the boundaries of a horror movie.

But her head is ringing. 

And when she closes her eyes, she thinks something else might be opening theirs. 

Her throat constricts, her jaw working. Dani moves a hand hesitantly from her own lap to Jamie’s, and Jamie grips it hard enough to feel the bones grind under her fingers. Dani doesn’t so much as wince.

“How,” Jamie whispers, “could Hannah have been dead?”

It isn’t _the_ thing. Isn’t _the_ discussion they should be having. It’s just the one Jamie feels capable of in this moment. 

“I don’t know,” Dani says honestly. “Flora says...Flora says there were rules, before that night. Rules the little boy explained to her, and rules Peter and Rebecca...”

Jamie shuts her eyes, a humorless grin on her lips. “Right. The little ghost boy who moved dolls around to show where we were at all times. And Peter, whose body has been in that fuckin’ lake for a year. And Becca, who--Becca, who--”

Her voice breaks. Rebecca, who she should have been able to talk down. Rebecca, whose body she saw floating face-down in dirty water. Rebecca, who stood beside her that night, against all logic and all sanity. 

Dani says, quietly, “It was real, Jamie.”

“ _How_?” Jamie demands, jumping up. “How could it have been real? How could there have been ghosts talking to the kids, possessing the kids, sitting at our goddamned table and carrying on like nothing ever-- _how_ , please, tell me.”

Her back strikes the door and she slides down, pressing her face against her knees. Her voice muffled, she feels the rest of the words disappear against the denim.

“How could Hannah have been dead, and I _never noticed_?”

She senses Dani moving to her with care, crouching down to lay a hand on Jamie’s bowed head. She closes her eyes, comforted despite it all by the stroke of Dani’s fingers through her hair. 

“I think,” Dani says, “it’s time we stop asking how, and start...looking to the next step.”

“ _I_ think,” Jamie says, raising her eyes, knowing from the very small twitch around Dani’s mouth she still isn’t accustomed to one of those eyes being so very brown, “I’m the one going crazy, now, Poppins.”

Dani smiles. It is not so much a happy expression as one lined with so much affection, it could break Jamie wide open. “I think,” she replies, “you are surprisingly sane, all things considered.”

Jamie sniffs, head tilting back to thunk against the door. “Right. Well. If I’m so sane, why does it feel like something’s _watching_ me? Like something’s just...like...she’s just...”

She pulls up short. _She._ No. Absolutely not. She isn’t going to walk that path, isn’t going to let that idea, which has been plucking at the threads of her sleep for a week, take root. There are some notions which are simply too toxic to plant. 

Dani, blessedly, does not press. She only moves a hand behind Jamie’s head, pushing lightly until Jamie is looking her in the eyes. 

“I was thinking,” she says, “of going on an adventure. There’s room for one more, if you’re interested.”

***

Jamie feels good behind the wheel. Wrong side of the road or not, there’s a consistency to driving she’s always liked: the signs make sense, the concept of four wheels propelled by an engine is constant, the way the breeze drifts through an open wind is unchanging. She feels the best she has in days, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on Dani’s knee. 

She hasn’t been sleeping, really. Dani pretends not to notice, pretends as though she isn’t kept awake by Jamie’s twitching and groaning. Like Jamie isn’t jerking out of dreams where the water is over her head, the cold is threaded deep into her bones, the anger is too huge to deny.

It’s the anger that’s getting to her, if she stops to think about it--which she doesn’t, as much as she can manage. She doesn’t stop to think about much, if she can help it. There’s a map unfolded before them, a truly stupid number of states to explore, and Dani’s there through it all. 

“Anywhere you’ve always wanted to go?” she asks in a roadside diner, stealing fries off Jamie’s plate like there isn’t a heap of them on her own. Jamie raises her eyebrows, watching Dani pilfer ketchup off her plate for good measure. 

“I dunno, Poppins. Each place is like it’s own damn country, isn’t it?”

“Come on.” Dani’s grinning. She’s getting good at this, Jamie thinks, this thing where she pretends not to be watching for signs Jamie is slipping. Her eyes sparkle, and she smiles like Jamie’s not waking first every morning to stare blankly at the wall, and when she kisses Jamie, there’s not a single beat of hesitation. 

_I’d hesitate_ , Jamie thinks sometimes. _If it were me. If I were watching me unravel in real time, I’d pull up short._ But Dani never does. Dani makes her try terrible American road trip snacks, and laughs when Jamie turns up her nose at soft-rock radio, and kisses Jamie like there are no ghosts between them. And, despite everything, Jamie finds it helps. To think that the exhaustive quality of her ringing head isn’t exhausting Dani--yet--helps. 

“Vermont,” she says at last, when Dani shows no sign of letting this slide. She seems, in fact, perfectly willing to eat every fry on Jamie’s plate until Jamie finally answers. “Always--don’t laugh--wanted to see Vermont, ever since I was a kid...”

 _I saw_ White Christmas _, and thought it was the most beautiful place in the world_ , she doesn’t add, because Christmas is months off, yet. Christmas is ages away, and the ring in her head isn’t getting louder--but it isn’t going away, either. There are dreams of drowning, dreams she wakes from in a sputtering, gasping lurch, and there is that horrible fucking _anger_ , and who knows who she’ll be by Christmas?

“Vermont,” Dani says agreeably, taking one more fry and holding it out until Jamie accepts it like a cigarette between her teeth. “Sounds beautiful.”

***

Vermont is not the first place they strike--there are dive bars in California, gorgeous rock formations in Nevada, terrifying heights in Colorado, endless ocean in Florida--but it is the first place they set down their bags longer than two weeks. There’s an apartment, because it’s cheaper than an infinite string of motel rooms, and though Jamie feels more than a little uneasy signing the lease, she does it. Mostly because Dani is right there, doing it first. 

Mostly because, if this all goes wrong, Dani will still need a soft place to land. Jamie owes her that. Jamie owes them both that.

“You don’t,” Dani tells her, sitting in the center of their unfurnished living room with a carton of takeout in her lap. “You don’t owe me anything.”

Jamie says nothing. Can’t find the words to sum up what Dani has done for her these past few months, this brave thing Dani keeps doing every day where she wakes up, and kisses Jamie good morning, and sets about the day like there’s definition to the hours ahead. 

Dani, who has been so scared so much of her life, smiles at her like she believes things really will work out. Dani believes in ghosts. Dani believes in magic. 

Dani believes, against the odds, that Jamie will still be here the next time the sun comes up. And Jamie, who sometimes slumps against the bathroom sink with her hair corkscrewing between her fingers, desperate to silence that terrible ringing between her ears, can’t find it in her to deny Dani that belief.

 _Can’t have me_ , she thinks ferociously. _Can’t have me, because I’m already promised, you motherfucker._

***

“Don’t you want to go back to teaching?” 

It’s been a few months. Jamie tries to pretend she hasn’t been counting the days, as if she doesn’t go to bed each night with another tally etched into the wall of her mind. It’s a little like being inside again, in reverse. Each day she can mark is another day survived. Another day still feeling--more and more, even, if she can dare believe it--like herself.

Another day with Dani looking at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. Even on her worst day, that’s worth something.

She’s watching Dani now, curious. Dani’s put time in taking small tutoring jobs, odds and ends here and there helping kids with math problems and spelling trials, but nothing concrete. It’s as if she’s fine walking slowly through the world, one hand tucked into Jamie’s, watching to see where she’ll be most needed one day.

And Jamie? Jamie’s trying to find something. Anything. Something that makes her feel like her body is still her own.

She takes landscaping jobs around the neighborhood--lawns to mow, gardens to weed, leaves to rake. She cleans gutters and repairs cracks and replaces windows. It isn’t much, but any money is good, and by the time Christmas lands on their doorstep, she’s well-known around the area as a good pair of hands.

Still, it’s just a way to keep busy. Just motion, keeping her head above water. Not a calling, not a purpose--nothing like Dani with kids.

“I don’t think so,” Dani says slowly. She’s been trying to figure out a bookshelf for the better part of the afternoon, refusing to let Jamie help. _You can’t be the only one contributing to the furniture situation, Jamie_ , she’d said, and Jamie had leaned comfortably back on the couch to watch her mis-sort screws and boards for the next hour. 

“Why not?”

Dani glances up, a screwdriver clamped between her teeth. Jamie feels her stomach give a pleasant little flip at the sight: Dani, hair tied back, wearing one of Jamie’s old shirts, looking the most frazzled she has since leaving England. _Useless with a tool_ , Jamie thinks fondly, _but damn if I don’t love her for it_. 

She’s been thinking it a lot lately, that word. Unpredictably, it rises, no matter what they’re doing. If Dani’s failing to make bread, or succeeding at rescuing dinner, or bustling around in search of lost socks, Jamie finds herself thinking the same thing. _I love her. This is what it feels like._

She hasn’t said it out loud. It hasn’t been long enough, she thinks--moreover, the ringing in her head, though softer than it was, is still present enough to make her wonder if there’s any point poking the bear. If she says the words, if she changes something about their dynamic now, what meteor might the universe send hurtling down into their life?

“I feel like I’m not...needed,” Dani says at last, trying to coax a screw to thread. Jamie doesn’t have the heart to tell her she’s probably stripped it bare, pushing as hard as she has been. “It sounds silly, but with that many kids, it just feels like too much. Maybe I’m not built for it.”

 _You were_ , Jamie thinks. _But that’s not why you’re doing it._ Dani won’t say it to her face, maybe won’t even think it, but Jamie can tell. It has nothing to do with kids or being overwhelmed, Dani not going back into a classroom. It has nothing to do with Dani at all.

“Give me that,” she says finally, pained at how Dani has turned an hour-long project into a full day’s event. Dani scrunches up her face in a manner Jamie has a terribly hard time not kissing, handing the screwdriver over with an air of surrender. 

_She’s protecting me_ , Jamie thinks, uncertain of whether she finds it charming or painful. _She wants to be ready at a moment’s notice, in case I go south._ Dani will never say it, but already, things don't have to be spoken to be true between them. 

Like how Dani always seems to sense when Jamie’s head is exploding. Like how Dani always seems to just know when Jamie can’t sleep, when Jamie’s fists are starting to clench and her teeth are starting to grind. 

Dani can read her like a book. Jamie can’t remember the last person who could say the same. 

She expected it to bother her, to pinch at her patience, having someone who can walk into the room and sense her mood. It’s always been Jamie’s job, in a way: read her father, read her brother, read the foster parents and the girls around town and the fellow inmates. Read, and plan accordingly. 

With Dani, she doesn’t have to work at it. With Dani, it’s a back and forth. 

Even if Dani can’t see what’s ringing behind her eyes. Even if Dani can’t really understand what’s lurking in the dark. She’s still trying, still swinging a flashlight over branch and bush and doing her goddamned best to find something to strike out at.

And Jamie, words failing her, loves her so fucking much it hurts.

***

It helps, to move. To clean the apartment. To fix things. More than anything, it helps to not stand still.

“Come to bed,” Dani says, without an ounce of pleading in her voice. Jamie shakes her head, moving back and forth across their tiny balcony, her hands covered in potting soil. 

“Can’t. Got to finish this.”

“Jamie.” No frustration, somehow, just the steadiness she remembers of Dani trying to teach those kids a little responsibility. She glances up, feeling the fight rise in her chest. 

_Not a child_ , she thinks, knowing it’s unfair, knowing it’s late, and she’s tired, and Dani just wants to keep her close. It’s a bad night. There are more and more bad nights, even on the heels of good days, lately. Jamie doesn’t want to understand. Doesn’t want to know how the daylight can feel so warm and so real, and the night can shatter that peace just as completely as a plate thrown at a wall.

“Jamie,” Dani says again, leaning against the sliding door, her hair half in her face. There’s a determined set to her mouth, a look that says she isn’t above grasping Jamie by the elbow and hauling her inside. “It’s midnight. That can wait.”

“Can’t,” Jamie says again, through gritted teeth, and oh, this kind of night isn’t fair to either of them. This kind of night, where the recklessness of rage builds to a scream inside her, where Jamie _knows_ that rage doesn’t even _belong_ to her, but can’t ward it off, anyway. This kind of night, where if she tries to lay down, she’s sure that rage will consume her, turn her into something she can’t afford. 

Her hands are buried in soil, the black weight of it caked under her nails, embedded in the lines of her palms. Her head hangs low, her arms flexing as she digs out a fresh space and moves a new shoot into its home, packing the soil carefully around until it can stand without her help. 

Dani doesn’t say anything. Dani is watching her, in a t-shirt and very little else, and that anger in Jamie frightens her more than anything. There’s a divide in her, she thinks: the parts that are her, and the parts corded off behind the ringing. The _her_ parts, the parts she knows are true, want to go to Dani. Want Dani completely, in every way that matters--to touch her, to kiss her, to fall into bed and sleep peacefully in her arms. 

But the other parts--the parts she thinks are already stronger than they have any right to be, the parts that belong not to Jamie but to something she absolutely refuse to accept--are howling. She can’t be near Dani, with those parts awake. She can’t risk it.

 _If I’d known the words_ , she thinks idiotically, _if I’d known the spell, it wouldn’t be like this. It would be different--still bad, maybe, but not like this. I broke something that night. I did it wrong._

“Not real,” she mutters, head hanging between her arms. “Not fucking real.”

“What?” Dani asks. Jamie shakes her head again, hating the tears in her eyes, hating the trembling in her hands. 

“Not real,” she repeats. “Dani. I’m not--”

Dani’s arms, around her middle, Dani’s face, pressed hard to her shoulder. Dani’s voice, low and calm in her ear. 

“You’re okay. You’re right here. Come to bed, Jamie. Come to bed, we’ll do this in the morning.”

There’s always a morning, with Dani. There’s always a next day, with Dani. As if Dani, by sheer force of will, can strong-arm the sun into rising and keep them going.

“If I’d done it right,” she realizes she’s saying in a shattered, choked voice. “If I’d done it right, maybe--maybe--”

Dani, turning her with firm hands, pressing close with a body that is so real, so solid, Jamie’s hands scramble to find purchase on her. “Come,” she repeats, like a prayer, “to bed. You’re all right. I promise.”

 _You can’t_ , Jamie thinks, even as she’s surging forward and kissing Dani through a veil of tears. _You can’t promise. You weren’t there._

***

There are good days--days where they’re adjusting furniture around the bedroom, days where they buy bad pizza and laugh themselves sick over terrible old movies, days where the feelings in Jamie’s chest are entirely her own. Good days, where moving does more than help; moving makes her feel perfectly, gloriously alive. She lets her hands roam, teasing Dani out of her clothes and into Jamie’s arms, and they fit together, and they are home. 

There are bad days--days where she has a breakdown over their finances, days where she can’t make herself eat a thing, and shudders in the shower for hours, and stares down that one eye in the mirror with a hatred she can’t fit into her body. Bad days, when the ringing is so loud, she almost can’t hear herself think. She tucks her arms around her ribs, squeezes until she leaves bruises on her skin, closes the door on Dani and tries to pretend there’s a timer on her own misery. 

The good days, for a while, outnumber the bad. She recognizes how lucky that is. 

The bad days, though shorter, are harder than she ever could have imagined. 

“Breathe with me,” Dani urges now, and somewhere beneath the panicked swells threatening to knock her over, Jamie is so embarrassed she can hardly stand it. _This isn’t me_ , she wants to scream. _This isn’t my life, this isn’t my story._

“I have to go.” She’s said it so many times, she’s lost track. The words bleed together, meaningless. “I have to go, Dani, you have to let me--”

“Why?” Dani demands. “Where?”

“I don’t know where.” Jamie shuts her eyes. “I just have to--before--before it--”

 _It_ is as close as she gets to giving the thing in her head a name. _It_ is the best she can bring herself to do, though she’s dreaming of strong hands and long white gowns and that horrible, unthinkable stone where a face ought to be. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dani says, her voice just a little more panicky than usual. It’s barely noticeable; if Jamie were anyone else, she’d see only the steady set of Dani’s mouth, the calm of her eyes. “Unless you’re going because you don’t want this anymore, Jamie, you’re not going. Is that it?”

“Of course it’s not...” Too much. This is too much. She’s almost at the door. All she needs to do is walk a little further, put her hand on the knob, push--

“Jamie. Don’t--”

“I can’t let you carry this,” Jamie explodes. The anger, she is dimly aware, is her own--not directed at Dani, but at this _thing_ she’s been carrying for almost a year. “You didn’t ask for this.”

“And you did?” Dani’s eyes are blazing. “Jamie, _I_ sent you to the lake. _I_ sent you after her, I told you--”

Jamie shakes her head, the ringing like a shriek inside her skull. It sounds, more and more, like a woman’s voice, she thinks. It sounds, more and more, like the anguished cry of a woman who has lost everything. 

She’s dimly aware she’s pressing her palms against her eyes, pushing hard enough to spark black dots across her vision. Dani is still talking, still trying to coax her back, but Jamie can’t really hear her. Can’t really hear anything except this horrible screaming _ring_ \--

“I’m too heavy,” she says, quietly. “I’m too heavy, and I love you too much to drag you down with me when I go, so--so I have to--”

Dani’s hands, pulling at her wrists. Pulling her hands away from her eyes. She blinks, tears and light blinding her to Dani’s face. 

“What?” she says, exhausted, embarrassed, miserable. “What is it?”

“Say it again,” Dani tells her, steady as starlight. “Say it again, please.”

“I’m too heav--”

“The other part.”

It’s the first time, Jamie realizes, even as she sags into Dani’s arms. The first time she’s said it out loud. She’d meant to do it carefully, to show Dani it was worth loving her back. She’d meant to save it for the best kind of day.

“You love me,” Dani says, lips against her ear. It isn’t a question. Jamie exhales. 

“Is it enough?”

Dani looks at her, as affectionate as a person has ever been while telegraphing _are you out of your mind?_ with their eyes. “It’s the only thing,” she says. “The only thing that has ever mattered.”

***

It’s strange, but it’s almost like saying it out loud--letting Dani hear how she feels, more than just making her watch for signs--takes her foot off the gas. It’s almost like saying it out loud pushes the thing riding along in her head out of the driver’s seat. 

“You seem...better,” Dani says, hesitantly. Jamie stretches out across their bed, taking up as much space as she possibly can. Dani, picking through the closet for tomorrow’s outfit, laughs. “Much better.”

She doesn’t push it further. Doesn’t spell out how Jamie hasn’t had a panic attack-- _that’s all they are, I promise, I know it feels like you’re dying_ \--in weeks, hasn’t tried to slip out the door with a packed bag in months, hasn’t vanished into a sulk on the balcony at midnight in so long, they’ve both pretended to forget she used to do it at all. Dani has gotten so good at this: not only reading her moods, but gauging when it’s okay to comment on them. 

Jamie hates that she has to step lightly at all. Even going on two years in, she doesn’t feel like it fits. She has never been the kind of person who needs others to take care--of her, or around her. Dani, least of all.

“I feel...okay,” she says, more guardedly than she’d like. She doesn’t want to tell Dani the dreams have slowed down, in case saying so jumpstarts them again. Doesn’t want to tell Dani there have been whole hours--days, even--where she barely processes the ringing in her head at all. 

_I’ll keep quiet about it forever_ , she promises that unseen entity, _if it shuts you up for good. I’ll never say another fucking word about it, if it keeps you out of our hair._

You can’t bargain with the devil, she understands--thinks she remembers someone saying when she was just a kid, too young and too stupid to understand how many forms a devil can take--but it’s no good pretending she’s bigger than this. Whoever Jamie was before that night, whoever she ought to be now, it hasn’t gone at all to plan. 

You can’t bargain with the devil, but she hasn’t heard that shrieking ring since saying _I love you_ , and maybe that’s still something. Maybe it’s enough. 

“Do you think...” Dani trails off, watching for signs of tension in Jamie’s posture, for inklings of disaster around the corner. Jamie gestures for her to go on. “Do you think she’s still there?”

Dani says _she_. Dani, who knows ghosts better than Jamie ever could, who understands somehow how all of this works in a way Jamie can’t touch, says _she_ , and Jamie knows she believes. Remembers the woman in white who dragged her through that big dark house, left her in a heap on the floor, took the child out from under Dani’s care. 

Dani hates the woman, she thinks. Dani hates her the way she’s never known Dani to hate anything or anyone. It pains Jamie to see that on her beautiful face, that curl of lip and tightening of jaw. Dani Clayton wasn’t born for hate, but the idea that there is a thing....a thing with the power to drown a child...the thing with a willingness to sweep Jamie away in its fury...

“I don’t want to talk about it tonight,” Jamie says, reaching with one hand until Dani joins her on the bed. “Please.”

 _Please_ , she thinks as she pulls Dani onto the pillows and kisses her, _let’s not give it the time of day. Let’s not give it the satisfaction of knowing we’re listening for its footsteps in the dark._ You can’t bargain with the devil, but you can bar the door with what little strength you have. You can take the woman you love to bed, slide naked between the sheets, touch and be touched and forget there’s anything to fear, for a little while. 

It’s always best, to be here with Dani. Always best, to banish the ringing with the steadiness of motion, the reliability of what quickens Dani’s breath, of where she can stroke and kiss and bite to bring Dani high. Nights like this, the only cry in her head is Dani’s voice saying her name. 

You can’t bargain with the devil, but Jamie is in love for the first time in her life, and if that isn’t some kind of sword in hand, she doesn’t know what is.

***

She fools herself, for a little while. Fools herself into thinking it’s over. That the spell had an expiration date. That loving Dani, and being loved in return, is enough to quiet the voice in her head. She fools herself, for a little while, and it is _good_ being fooled. Jamie never would have wished for it before. Jamie likes clear eyes, steady hands, reading the world around her and responding accordingly. Jamie has never been the sort of person to put her head down and hope for the best. 

She takes a job in a flower shop. Always thought, privately, that she’d one day have her own, but things don't always play out like you hope. She works for an old man who loves flowers more than anything in the world, except maybe his late wife, but whose hands are no longer nimble. He doesn’t talk too much, and doesn’t ask Jamie about the days where her face is far away, and when Dani brings lunch on her breaks, he dotes on her like a beloved granddaughter. 

“You’re lucky,” he tells Jamie one day, after Dani has gone off to an afternoon tutoring gig. Jamie, in the middle of arranging lilacs, frowns.

“How so?”

He nods toward the door. “That one sees you. We aren’t all so fortunate, to find someone who sees us.”

Jamie doesn’t answer--it’s too tenuous a moment, too carefully-strung--but she thinks love calls to love. Love calls to love, and a man who has known the greatest love he’s ever likely to have can see it in them, too. It puts a lump in her throat, the way he smiles and goes back to the books like he’s said nothing particularly special. 

That night, after Dani falls asleep, Jamie sits up and watches her. Dani, who has traveled everywhere with her. Dani, who has spent almost three years watching for little changes in Jamie’s demeanor, little signals she is needed on good days and on bad. Dani, who has carried ghosts of her own, and would never leave Jamie to hold this alone. 

_Lucky_ , she thinks, feeling as though the line between luck and curse is maybe thinner than anyone could dream. _Yes. If I am broken, I am that, too._

She fools herself into thinking it can last, and every day of that pretty lie feels like a miracle. 

***

The day the ringing returns, it comes on hard and fast, and in the middle of work. 

One minute, Jamie is taking an order, helping a customer select from a long list which flowers best suit a birthday. The next, she is crouched on the floor, her arms clamped around her own head. 

“What--what’s wrong with--” The customer sounds terrified, and Jamie ought to be reassuring--Jamie is _always_ reassuring, always able to stabilize a moment before it can fracture completely--but the ringing is so _loud_. So loud, and so much less a ring than it once was. 

Today, it is entirely a scream. Entirely a woman’s voice--The Woman, maybe, the Lady of the Lake; or maybe it’s someone else, someone like Rebecca, like Hannah, like ( _oh god, oh god, no_ ) Dani wailing inside Jamie’s _skull_ , make it _stop._

“Jamie. Jamie, hey, hey, shh.” 

She peels open streaming eyes, the vibration inside her head like the world’s most potent migraine, to find Dani at eye level. Dani, in a brown jacket and gold earrings, looking like she half wants to rush Jamie to a hospital.

“Screaming,” Jamie manages. “She’s screaming, she’s so--angry--so--”

Except that isn’t it, is it? It’s not just the rage returned, not just that horrible aching fury, but something worse. Something so miserable, so deeply agonized that Jamie couldn’t give it a name if she tried. 

Dani bundles her home, walking slowly with her arms around Jamie’s shivering frame, and doesn’t ask if she’s all right. Doesn’t ask anything at all. Just slides into bed beside Jamie’s curled body and wraps around her until Jamie can’t feel anything that isn’t the woman she loves. 

The voice screams, and screams, and goes on screaming, and Jamie thinks, _She’s lost someone. She’s lost everyone. This is how you scream when there is nothing left of your life but the gaping void of loss._

She pushes back against it, fists jammed into her ears, unable to shut it off. This thing which has been slumbering for almost two years, this thing which let Jamie fabricate some sense of peace for such a small amount of time, is awake now. Awake, and absolutely refusing to be ignored. 

Dani holds her for hours, cradling her, murmuring soft words against her shoulder, and Jamie thinks this is what going crazy feels like. This is what you get, for trying to make a deal with the devil, for trying to invent a spell on the fly, for trying to reroute magic. 

It shouldn’t be possible, to fall asleep like this, but there’s no other explanation. No other way Jamie could find herself underwater, her hands stained blue with the mark of the lake. No other way Jamie could feel the encroaching reality of the Lady in her head, grasping her by the throat, squeezing until her eyes bulge and her hands scrape for release. 

She wakes to silence. 

She wakes to darkness.

She wakes with one hand half around Dani’s neck, her fingers placed lightly along the memory of bruises so old, they’re long invisible. Dani, lips parted in sleep, doesn’t so much as flinch. There is trust in sleep, trust in knowing Jamie’s hands coasting along her skin always comes with love. How many times has Dani been lulled to sleep with Jamie’s fingers tracing the soft skin of her chest, trailing collarbone and shoulder and heartbeat? 

Not like this. Never like this.

 _Go_ , something in Jamie whispers. _Go now. You won’t get another chance._

 _Can’t leave her_ , she thinks helplessly, watching her own hand twitch against the pale column of Dani’s throat. _Can’t leave her now. You can’t have her, goddammit._

Two contradicting thoughts. Two thoughts that simply cannot exist at the same time. Stay, and watch this get worse; leave, and know you’ve saved her. 

Jamie, heart in her throat, understands there is no choice here. No choice at all.

***

 _You can’t have her, goddammit_ becomes the pulse pushing her on. Where these last few years have been _you can’t have me, I am spoken for, I am promised_ , Jamie finds this new mantra so much more powerful. Fighting for herself is one thing; going down swinging while the whole world piles on is familiar enough. But fighting for Dani?

She’s never been stronger in her life.

She leaves a note. It kills her, scratching it out on a scrap of paper intended for phone messages. It kills her, tears following the loops and scrawls of her explanation: _She wants you, too, and I can’t let that happen. I can’t. If she gets me, she gets only me._

She hesitates at the tail end, wanting to add more, wanting to add everything. She settles for simply _I love you, and that’s enough._ Her throat burns. She’s out the door and into the car before she can second-guess herself. 

She drives. The Jeep is a rumble of motor and wheel, and she drives in any direction but home. The scream is still there, as if a door has been slammed shut on its desperation; she cranks the radio to block it out, puts down the windows, grinds her teeth against the pounding headache. 

The hours pass, the sun creeping higher, and if Dani hasn’t found the note yet, she soon will. Jamie tries not to imagine how Dani will wake, her arms empty, her hands stretching across the bed for signs of Jamie still being there. It won’t throw her off, not right away, to find nothing on Jamie’s side of the mattress. Jamie wakes first all the time. Jamie is always puttering around the kitchen, watering plants, setting up on the balcony with a book and a cup of tea. 

Dani won’t know something is wrong for a while, maybe even as long as it takes her to shower and dress for the day. She’ll pad out of the bathroom with wet hair and bare feet, searching for Jamie at the stove, on the couch, in a dozen places around the apartment. 

She’ll search, and the search will get steadily more alarmed as Dani tries to convince herself it’s nothing. That maybe Jamie went into work early. That maybe Jamie ran to the grocery store, or out for breakfast. Like Jamie would ever leave without kissing her goodbye. 

_I did_ , she thinks, tears threatening to spill over. _I kissed you goodbye, and that was that. Had to be, Poppins. I refuse to be the thing that drags you down for good._

She drives without purpose, careless of state bounds. She finds herself tilting toward the coast, making her way down through New Hampshire, into Massachusetts, stopping only for gas and bad fast food. She drives until her eyes are on fire, until her head bobs over the steering wheel, pulling off into rest stops for an hour or two of sleep.

The screams are louder, in her sleep. The waves are over her head. She can still see Dani’s eyes, so blue and so miserably trusting. She wakes with a lurch, heart hammering, and sets off again.

The Lady--this _thing_ she does not want to name, and no longer feels capable of shutting out--wants her to go back. She can feel the threads around her wrists and ankles, pulling like a marionette’s strings, toward the first airport that could carry her across an ocean. She thinks of Miles, a hundred years ago, snarling, “These _stupid_ puppets” and shakes her head. 

“Not going,” she mutters. “Not fucking going back there, not ever, and you can just fuck _off_ if you think I am.”

You can’t bargain with the devil, but you can’t lay down and let the devil steamroll you, either. The only thing left is to drive, and to try desperately not to think of Dani alone in their apartment, Dani desperately trying to retrace a map Jamie didn’t leave behind. 

She drives. She sleeps. She dreams. The voice in her head is sometimes alien, sometimes a mother, a sister, a wife with no one left; sometimes, it is worse. Sometimes, it is Dani, standing on the shore of a lake, screaming herself hoarse. 

She goes for days, growing ever wearier, until she can’t keep the Jeep on the road anymore. Until the lanes blur together, and the states are one massive chunk of _running_ , and Jamie finds herself in Philadelphia. Finds herself at a motel she can’t sleep in, a bed she abandons for the front seat of the Jeep after only an hour of trying. She can’t sleep with the Lady, and she can’t sleep without Dani, and she can’t _sleep_. 

_Fight_ , the part of her that is most Jamie growls. _Fight her off. She can’t have you, the fucker._

 _Why?_ she wonders. _Why can’t she? What’s stopping her? I said the words. Wrong words, maybe, but I said them._

 _You’re lucky_ , the voice of the old shopkeeper cuts in. _You’re lucky. She sees you._

She doesn’t know how she finds herself in a phone booth, the numbers punched in with a shaking hand. She didn’t mean to find herself here. Doesn’t mean to call home. 

“I’m so sorry,” she hears herself say, the words so bogged down with numb grief, she almost can’t understand them herself. “I’m so, so sorry, Dani.”

She doesn’t believe in ghosts. Doesn’t believe in what she can’t touch. Doesn’t believe in what she can’t understand. But she believes in this. Believes in Dani’s voice, broken and sharp and loving, over a long-distance line. Believes in Dani saying, “Don’t you ever. Don’t you ever do this again, Jamie. Not ever.”

Believes, even, in her own exhausted response: “I’m here. I’m here, but I want to come home.”

 _What if_ , she thinks, sitting with her head resting on her bent knees, _she tries again to take her? What if she tries again to take her away from me?_

She wonders how it would go, if someone else were in her shoes. If it were Owen, or Hannah, or--god forbid--Dani carrying this burden. Would they be stronger? Would they be able to drive, to keep driving, to run for the rest of their lives alone if it meant locking this thing up in a cage of sheer willpower?

Jamie, if asked three years ago, would have said she’d be able to do it alone. That alone was better, actually. That alone was the safest anyone ever got.

Jamie now, Jamie unable to sleep without Dani’s hand on her wrist, Jamie unable to think without Dani’s smile across the room, can’t imagine it. Can’t remember what that woman was like, the one who thought alone was strong. Who thought alone was safe.

Safety, she thinks, is only this: a woman who hops a plane, jumps into a cab, spills out onto the pavement outside a rundown motel just to find her again. A woman who is already sobbing as she throws herself into Jamie’s arms, half-furious, half-exuberant. Safety is Dani’s hands cradling the back of her head, Dani’s thumbs on her cheeks, Dani kissing her around breathless proclamations: “Never, Jamie, never again, never again, _I love you_.”

 _You can’t fucking have her_ , Jamie thinks tiredly. _You can’t fucking have her, because I need her too much._

***

She doesn’t sleep soundly again for almost a month, even with Dani in that bed. She feels as though she is sleepwalking through her life, half-unplugged from reality; Dani’s smile is radiant, Dani’s kiss is certain, Dani is so real, and all Jamie can be in return is exhausted. 

“You have to sleep,” Dani tells her softly, with Jamie hazy-eyed on the couch. “This isn’t healthy.”

“I’m fine,” Jamie says, which is hilariously untrue. She isn’t fine. She hasn’t been fine since they left Bly. She’s ignored it, been furious at its grasp on her life, tried to make deals with it, gone running off in misery from it--but she hasn’t been fine. Not for long. 

How long can a person fight off the inevitable? How long can one person rail tooth and nail against something so huge, so patient, so terrible?

“Talk to me, at least,” Dani says, and Jamie shuts her eyes. She wants to. She wants to let it all out now. She’s so _tired_. 

_You can’t have her_ , she thinks again, that last vestige of stubborn hanging on by a thread. _You can’t have her, even if you take me. That wasn’t the deal._

She’s swaying at the stove one afternoon, dimly aware that her body has been transporting her around the kitchen for almost an hour, when Dani gets home early. Jamie looks around at her, bruise-eyed, mouth slack. 

“You’re back.”

Dani tosses her purse to the couch, juggling something in nervous hands. Jamie squints, trying to force her bleary gaze to focus. 

“Is that...a plant?”

Dani sets the pot carefully down on the counter, eyes never leaving Jamie. “Found it on the street,” she says. “Wanted to save it.”

 _Like me, you mean?_ Jamie thinks, her mouth pulling into a tired smile. “Give it here, then.” There isn’t much she can do these days, but she understands plants. Understands the logic of them, one of the few things in the world that doesn’t change on a whim. 

People--especially Jamie--don’t make sense. People are so fucking exhaustive, it’s a misery just trying to make it through a day. But plants...

“Your roots,” she says, shifting aside the dirt and frowning. “Your roots are all--”

A flash of gold. A band between her fingers. Jamie blinks, wondering if she’s fallen asleep standing up at last. 

“Dani, why’s there a--”

“Here’s the thing,” Dani says, in a voice so soft and so grounded, Jamie feels the room brighten under its music. “You are my best friend. And the love of my life. And I don’t know what’s going on with what you’re carrying. I know you don’t like talking about it. And I know it’s bigger than you think you can deal with.”

Jamie sways again, her free hand groping for the counter. Dani moves to her, hands light on her hips, holding her up. 

“But I need you to understand something. This? Us? We are bigger than it is. If you let me in, Jamie. If you invite _me_ in this time. You, me, us? We are enough to fight it off. Together. I want to do that with you, for as long as we possibly can. And I know--I know we can’t technically get married, but--”

 _You. Me. Us._ What is it about those words, Jamie wonders. What is it about those words that feels _right_? 

She searches for it, but there is no sign of a scream ringing behind her eyelids. No sign of strings binding tight around her joints, pulling her in directions she didn’t ask to go. There is only Dani’s blue eyes, waiting patiently for an answer.

 _Love_ , she thinks dazedly. _Not possession. Funny, how often the two get crossed._

“I reckon that’s enough for me,” she says, beaming with genuine joy for the first time since she can remember. Relief spills into Dani’s smile, her head bobbing.

“Let me in,” she repeats against Jamie’s lips. “Let me carry it, too.”

***

The ring doesn’t banish the shadows forever. Jamie is starting to believe--starting to accept--nothing will do that. The ringing in her head is quiet enough to tune out, most days, but never entirely gone. She said words, after all. She cast a spell, after all.

But Dani’s words, Dani’s spell, might be rooted in something stronger than whatever pact was made in that lake. 

It isn’t easy to talk about, even now--even as the months skate by, and the years start to stack up, and Jamie finds herself stitching back together the places that had started to come undone. She doesn’t like to think about the thing in her head, the sense even now of being watched. Of being followed. Of something big, and dark, and angry lurking beneath the surface.

“She’s still there,” she says, after a bad night of dreams that leave her feeling wrung-out by morning. Dreams of trunks and sisters and betrayals. Dreams of daughters and husbands and pacing of locked rooms. “She’s still...”

Waiting. She hates that she believes in this. Hates that she believes something so intangible could have such a hold over her life.

Dani, who wears the ring and signed the papers and kissed her with all the promise of _I’ll marry you again when we can_ , looks up. There’s silver woven in with the blonde these days--just a sprinkling here and there, like the lines around her eyes. Twenty years, Jamie thinks with some surprise. Twenty years, they’ve been doing this together. The _you, me, us_ of it all. 

_Didn’t think I’d even make it five, did you, you fucker?_ she asks the thing in her head, almost companionably. _You almost took me down, you know. Without her, think you would have._

But twenty years have come and gone, and though it isn’t easy, she forces herself to tell Dani when it’s bad. Forces herself to accept Dani’s help, though there are still days she feels weak for needing it. It feels backwards, even now, to need so much from Dani. 

“Do you want to stay home?” Dani asks now. “We don’t have to do this. You said it would be...”

 _Tempting fate,_ is what Jamie said when the invitation arrived in the mail. _Tempting all the fucking fates,_ she’d said, turning the notice over in her hands. Even just looking at the name of the place, stamped into cardstock in gold foil, had yanked hard on those old threads. The ring in her head had mounted to a roar. 

She had closed her eyes then, as she is closing them now, and said, “Dani.” And Dani, true to her vows, had come. Pulled her close. Kissed her forehead. 

“You don’t have to go,” she says again, her voice hitching toward that old worry. Jamie smiles. 

“Think I do. I think...”

_Some things, you can’t run from forever. Some things, you can’t ward off, no matter how stubborn you are._

The whole flight over, she feels like she’s coming untethered from herself. Dani’s hand grips hers, careless of anyone’s opinion on the matter, and Jamie stares at the gold of Dani’s wedding band. A symbol, sure--but something more, too. An oath. A spell, in its own right. 

_Let me in_ , Dani had breathed that day, so many years ago, and Jamie had opened to her. Had offered up the invitation for a second time in her life, one Dani could at any time return. That’s the price of love, she thinks sometimes; even freely given, it can be rebuffed. No one is held hostage, if done properly.

She grips Dani’s hand as the plane touches down, as they collect their bags, as they call a car. The countryside is as lush as she remembers, and it surprises her; memory is normally so much more vivid than real life. People are sadder in reality, meaner, more distant than anything you can dream up. 

But Owen’s smile is still lined with brotherly mischief, and Henry’s grip is still iron-strong. Some things, so similar, it’s like gazing down a portal to 1987. She almost expects to turn her head and find Hannah there, eyebrows arched, laughing at her for pretending to stay over for _noble reasons_ that night.

Still, there are signs that time has indeed marched on without her consent. Though Flora and Miles are polite in their reception, Jamie knows they have no idea what she’s doing here. They have been allowed--through some combination of time away and distance from Jamie, who could never bring herself to reach out in those early years--to forget Jamie ever existed. Flora’s brow creases when she meets Jamie’s eyes, like there’s a dream she’s just this side of forgetting, but it never seems to stick. Jamie is just Henry’s friend, now. Just a memory made flesh. 

And Dani, who would have sacrificed anything for the children they once were, is only a lovely smile and a handshake. 

“What made you want to come back here for it?” she asks Henry, watching Flora walk off with the man she will, tomorrow, call husband. Her hand is in Jamie’s, her lips forming words Jamie can’t bring herself to voice. _What on earth would make you want to return to Bly, of all fucking places?_

Henry is smiling absently, watching Flora go. “She asked, believe it or not. Said she had a dream. Something about a lake and a woman holding her, and that she felt...”

 _Terrified_ , Jamie thinks. Dani is gripping her arm. But Henry shakes his head as if clearing an unpleasant memory. 

“Said she felt safe,” he finishes. He’s looking at Jamie. Jamie can’t quite make herself look back.

“One night,” she tells Dani, all too aware she’s really talking to herself. “One night. After the wedding, we go.”

She doesn’t want to sleep here. Doesn’t want to set foot in that kitchen, where she last held a normal conversation with a ghost she’d called friend. Doesn’t want to make her way up the staircase, which had left black bruises on Dani’s whole body. 

Doesn’t want to be standing in this doorway, looking into a room she remembers as exhilarating, as free, as the first breath of a new home. 

“We don’t have to,” Dani says again. “We can go into town, stay at the inn--”

Jamie shakes her head. Some things, you just have to face, eventually. 

“One night,” she repeats. “Then we go, and we don’t ever have to come back.”

Dani bites her lip. Jamie aches to see this expression on her face, the very particular blend of Dani trying to be strong and Dani trying desperately not to think of that morning she woke to a note. She’s not sure Dani will ever be able to banish completely the memory of Jamie slipping out from under her, making it four states away before finally breaking down. 

“Hey,” she says now, cupping Dani’s face, remembering how the ghosts of two women twenty years younger, with twenty years less terror on their backs, had stumbled into this room and shucked out of wet clothes. “I know. I promise, if I have any say at all, it’ll all be okay.”

She’d promised, after all. Dani had growled _never again, Jamie, do you hear me_ , and Jamie had kept that oath faithfully ever since. Bad days, worst days, it hadn’t mattered as much as making certain Dani never looked at her with such terror in her eyes again. 

“One night,” she says, and kisses Dani like there are twenty fewer years between them, like she isn’t so scared, she can hear her heartbeat in her ears. 

***

It’s like walking underwater the whole evening. Every corner she turns in this house, memories lean out from the walls to caress her face, to tug at her clothes, to grip her skin hard enough to hurt. Hannah’s laugh, from the front hall; Owen’s best bread, so intoxicating, she could steal a bite; the kids giggling and yelling from their rooms. She’s looking for ghosts with each and every footfall, and if she can’t _see_ them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still waiting for her.

Dani doesn’t leave her side. Not for a minute. It’s as though she, too, is remembering the night they’d stepped away from one another, never realizing how much can go wrong in only a few minutes. 

Jamie doesn’t mind the constant presence of Dani’s hand at her back, Dani’s voice a comfortable soundtrack to an otherwise heavy day. _You, me, us_ , she thinks. If Dani is here, what can really go so wrong?

If Dani is here, Jamie can pretend the ringing in her head isn’t rising to a shrill howl. 

Can pretend it isn’t Flora’s tiny voice, shrieking for help. 

Can pretend it isn’t a two-decades-younger Dani, screaming her name.

“Still here?” Dani murmurs into her ear. They’re sitting on the old couch, the one Jamie remembers too well from a conversation about Peter fucking Quint and Rebecca Jessel. Dani is tucked close to her side, her hand playing lightly along Jamie’s knee. 

“Yeah,” Jamie says, and tries to smile, tries not to feel the cold of the lake water seeping into phantom jeans. “Still here.”

_You, me, us. Can’t fucking have me, because Dani Clayton already signed that deed a long time ago._

***

They slip into Dani’s old bed like it’s the first time, both trembling all over in a way that has nothing to do with sex. Dani looks at her in the warm glow of the lamplight and Jamie thinks, _Always did see me. From the very start, you always did._

There’s an unspoken desperation when she reaches up, buries a hand in hair gone just a little silver at the temples, pulls Dani down to her. An unspoken need, as she slides Dani’s dress off her shoulder, replacing the soft material with a softer kiss. Twenty years and no time at all between them, Jamie thinks, and there is such love in her heart when Dani kisses her exactly as she did the night Jamie laid all the cards on the table. 

It’s the same--the way Dani whimpers her name, the way Jamie rocks against her hand, the way both of them are laughing and sighing and banishing the shadows with every movement. It’s the same, and it’s so different, now that she knows exactly what Dani likes, now that Dani knows exactly how to read every twitch and groan. Once, they tested one another out like new poetry; now, they are a symphony, practiced and deliberate and with so much heart poured into the song.

It’s the same, and it’s so different, and Jamie falls asleep like she did that night: so secure in the knowledge that this is _right_ , even if so little else can say as much. 

She sleeps, comforted by Dani’s breath on the back of her neck, by Dani’s hand loose around her midsection. She sleeps for hours.

When she wakes, it’s without warning. 

When she walks, it’s without a sound.

She finds herself at the lake, and there’s no room in her for surprise. No room in her for much of anything, except the dim awareness that gravity always finds a way. 

A step. Water, sloshing into her sneaker. Another. Water, climbing the legs of her jeans. 

_Take me. C’mon, you fucker, why take her when you can have_ me _?_

It wasn’t magic. Wasn’t the right kind of story, or the right kind of spell. And yet, here she is: wading into the lake again. Walking slowly, deliberately, every step an ancient debt collected.

_Take me, you fucker. Take me, give her back. Take--_

_Let me in. Let me carry it, too. You. Me. Us._

Jamie stops. Her eyes are closed, her body buffeted by gentle waves. She is, she realizes with a cold jolt of panic, up to her shoulders now. The ground is beginning to slope down, falling out from under each somber step. Soon, she’ll be out of choices. 

_Let me in. Let me--_

“You can’t have me,” Jamie says softly, her voice barely more than the summer breeze. “You can’t.”

That isn’t how it works, she knows. Isn’t how a spell is meant to function. Magic is a one-way street, faeries sweep you away from home, and you don’t get to go back. Not ever. 

But sometimes, every once in a blue goddamn moon, another kind of magic rises up. Another kind of fight takes place. Sometimes, a promise made under threat of loss is undone by a promise made with no obligation to speak of. 

_You can’t have her, because she has me. And you can’t have me, because I’m already promised. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, there’s nothing left for you here._

She’s treading water now, in slow, graceful arcs. Treading water as the ringing in her head roars its displeasure. Jamie tips her head back, gazing at silver moonlight streaming through the trees. 

“I’m sorry,” she says again, a faint smile playing around her lips. “But my wife says no.”

There is more she could say--how she’d give anything to keep from hurting Dani again, how she’d give anything to keep Dani safe, how she understands that putting herself to bed beneath these waves now would undo two decades of proving to Dani she isn’t going anywhere. Dani needs that kind of stability, more than she’ll ever admit. Dani, who has made of herself a root system for Jamie, even when they both thought it should be the other way around. 

There is more she could say--how this house is huge, and crawling with memories, but vacant of hauntings. How Flora’s need to come back was not a pull toward Lady or lake, but toward a dream of what it was to be small and lovely and full of precious belief. How, tomorrow, Flora will be married, and that precious belief will bloom into something big enough to sustain two people for the rest of their lives. 

There is more she could say--but the ringing is dying down, now. Fading away. Maybe for now, maybe forever; Jamie couldn’t say. She knows only that it is Dani’s voice, whispering in her ear, the spell woven over her life that casts out all darker forms of magic. 

Jamie doesn’t believe in what she can’t see. Doesn’t believe in what she can’t prove. Except for this. Except for this one enormous, splendid thing. 

She staggers from the lake, spilling out onto the shore in a heap of wet clothes and violent shivers. She lays there a while, her back in the grass, her eyes on clouds scudding gently across the lightening sky. There is a lightness about her body she almost doesn’t remember from being thirty, from being at home on these grounds, from falling in love for the first time with a pair of bright blue eyes. 

***

The house slumbers on, every party tucked away in their respective rooms, and Dani is still sleeping. Her arm is still cast across the bed, right where Jamie ought to be. Her face is peaceful, as though she has no idea what kind of weapon she equipped Jamie with for the night’s war. 

Jamie changes quietly into dry clothes, slips silently back into bed, feels Dani groan in her sleep and roll over. She lays a hand lightly on Dani’s shoulder, fingers curled around the soft skin she knows so well. 

She didn’t plan for a ghost story. Didn’t plan, all those years ago, for magic and grief and learning to accept the parts that are so painful, they ought to do her in. She’d thought, once upon a time, that exhaustive meant unworthy, and that she’d do just fine living that sort of empty life. She’d planned for nice and boring, not twenty years of battle.

She’d planned for _alone_ , above all else. Planned for living and dying in the tiny village of Bly, her hands grimed with soil, her flowers the only source of comfort she thought she’d need.

If she did not plan for ghosts, she also did not plan for Dani Clayton--now stretching, pressing backward into Jamie with the sleepy certainty that Jamie will be there. And, if there are still eyes watching in the darkness, if there is still something lurking in the depths of Jamie’s skull she can’t entirely fathom, so be it. Some burdens are permanent. Some scars, scorched deep into fragile skin, are lasting.

And some stories, against all odds, have a happy ending. A happy middle. A happy _now_ , if nothing else. 

_Lucky_ , thinks Jamie, pressing her nose to the nape of Dani’s neck. Soon, they’ll have to get up. There is, after all, a wedding to attend. 

“You’re here,” Dani says, sleep-muddled, but happy. Jamie pulls her close. 

“I’ll stay as long as you like.” 


End file.
